Spaces In-Between: Integrating Double-Sided Kitchen, Foyer, Bar, and Interspaces
Spaces In-Between: Integrating Double-Sided Kitchen, Foyer, Bar, and Interspaces
The Proposed Spaces In-Between the dining cum working area and the enclosed kitchen that serves a diverse interaction possibility in the home
An entrance foyer in a form of a partition is not preferred. The exchange of questions includes: How to design and enclosed a kitchen? Are two kitchens (a dry kitchen or pantry and a wet kitchen) better with the limited amount of budget available?
One Decent Size Kitchen-Bar-Foyer-Storage Integration
We immediately turn constraints into a big double-sided enclosed kitchen that integrates bar seating with a sliding door and a sliding window for a better kitchen experience that allows different levels of interaction with other spaces.
The proposed enclosed kitchen. Instead of two kitchens (a pantry and a wet kitchen), a long double-sided kitchen is a practical intervention that enables vast cooking and baking activities.
The designed enclosed kitchen system has an integrated entry foyer that enables personal stuff to be displayed and it is a place for important items such as a house key and a car key. The niches in wood veneer (top) and quartz stone (bottom) has a continuity with the kitchen inner that creates a dialogue in-between two spaces.
When the kitchen is not used, the proposed sliding door opens spaces up to form bigger entry spaces.
When heavy cooking is going on, the sliding door and the sliding window separates the kitchen outside from the cooking fumes.
The cooking activity has spatial propensities that encourage social interaction which makes spaces in-between interesting and fun.
As the operability of the sliding window is on both sides, it increases the tendency to use spaces on both sides - the kitchen counter and the bar seatings. It can allow users conversations during eating, preparing meals, boils water, or the moment when one is taking a glass of water.
The operability of the sliding window is on both sides.
The designed enclosed kitchen has an integrated breakfast bar or a worktop with high chairs.
View out from the inside of the proposed enclosed kitchen. As it accommodates cooking, laundry, and baking, the sliding window adds fun in visual connection, conversation, and the ability to hear activities going on at the dining and living area.
Like most of the 1000sqft 3-room apartments, the original apartment design a long, eerie, and redundant walkway that is often neglected. Seen as an important in-between space between rooms and where family members can encounter each other other than the blank walls, the corridor is transformed into a gallery liked space where lots of memories (family photos), paintings, and art can be put on.
View out from the walkway into the living area. The proposed gallery corridor has a track lighting feature that enables post-occupancy add-on, reduction of light fitting, adjustment of light type, and intensity when need. It turns the walkway into a potential corridor of memory and artistic inspiration.
View from the living area towards the proposed dining area and the kitchen, where different activities such as working from home, eating, gathering happen with the joy of possible interaction in-between different spaces of different functions.
In order to accentuate the spaciousness of the house, a simple trick is used: A two-colors system with wood veneer at the bottom, and a lighter color lamination on the top. The spaces that the proposed two-color presents give a perception of a bottom-up spatial continuity and the white color adjoins with the wall and the ceiling feels a sense of infinity.
The proposed TV wall is a personalized-able abstraction. There is a nook depth of abstract creativity on the TV board that allows users to creatively display the item they find meaningful. An asymmetry gesture between the TV backboard and the drawer on the right is a cue created to further stimulate the creativity of displaying. The two mini concealed spotlight give a hint to it and enhances whatever is displayed.
The curtain consist of the owner's favorite color suggested, hand-picked after several rounds of sample check in the house during a different time of the day to see color variation and shades. It is more than a feature for privacy that the user now often associates with as a colorful backdrop and a sense of enclosure.
The proposed master bedroom gives a simple two-color spatial perception. Large size storage doors are introduced to increase the perception of a spacious interior and the wardrobe color scheme suggest an accentuation of the bottom-up spatial perception from the floor (dark), to the wardrobe sliding door (light wood), to the upper storage and the ceiling (off-white).
A shallow makeup table is custom-made to make sense of the existing recessed corner that is shallow. It is made of a slim drawer that gives the underneath spaces storage for the laundry bags, worn clothes, and make-up stool with two colors: the wood veneer for the drawer and white laminate for the top that corresponds to the overall interior color scheme.
The small room has a straightforward, simple storage format that is narrow in nature to correspond, complement, and appreciate the smallness of the room size.
A light fitting that has two different lighting formats is hand-picked to add idiosyncrasy to the room. The uplights are ambient light that gives enclosure and mood-setting to the overall spaces, while the task light adds specificity to the work corner that will have a work table for task-focusing activities.
The cafe-liked kitchen counter has a depth of interconnecting foreground and background activities.
A medium-size round mirror is picked to correspond with the small-size powder room design. The add-on vanity cabinet considers not only extra storage for the detergent but also underneath spaces for practical used such as the spaces for a pail and other cleaning tools. It adds shadows that visual-spatially elevates the vanity top.
The master bath used wood veneer positions in-aligned with the wardrobe that gives continuity of the bathroom inside, and the bedroom spaces. The two spaces have an experiential continuity that creates dialogue in-between.
